Learning From The Classics Podcast: Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol,

Let's begin.

A didactic novel.

It's actually a novella,

Which is smaller than a novel.

And it was serialized,

So it was produced for the masses in editorial form in a newspaper.

And this was a great way to sort of drive the interest towards Dickens' work.

And he had interest in the UK,

Interest over the channel in the USA also.

Yeah,

And that's how he did it.

That's how he drove interest to his work.

So didactic novella meaning it's a moral lesson.

It's trying to teach us something.

And it's kind of smothered in cotton wool.

It's not a harsh lesson.

It's not something we need to be fearful of.

Although Dickens was careful in portraying it in such a way so that it wasn't too hard hitting.

But the message behind it is actually one of social responsibility.

And he's trying to make us aware of that social injustice at the time.

So it was a serious message,

But it was sugar-coated for the masses so that it would be more acceptable,

Which is,

You know,

That's an author's plight,

Right?

Okay.

So yes,

Most of his work was serialized.

And because the parts were published over a long period of time,

More often over than a year,

Readers would experience events almost as in real time.

And it gave them a chance to,

A bit like the serializations today,

You know,

You've got the soap operas and so on.

And it's a way for people to connect with the story,

Communicate with each other about the story.

And it was a clever thing to do because it brought people together.

It got people talking and it increased interest in him and his work.

And he had a particular message,

Which we're going to look into a bit today.

So yeah,

A Christmas Carol.

I like it.

It's short,

It's punchy.

It's got the themes of the supernatural,

Which was so popular in the Victorian age.

It's kind of that comfort story.

It's the one that we all know it's been suggested by Virginia Woolf.

You know the story even though you've never read it,

Right?

So we know what's going to happen right at the beginning.

We know that for a story to be a Christmas story,

Nobody could ever possibly remain as mean as Scrooge.

And yet he's set up to be the meanest of the mean.

So we've got those old Gothic Victorian themes coming through of the darkness,

The bleak,

The black backdrop,

The misery,

The deprivation.

And this miser huddled by himself in his counting house.

And then obviously that's juxtaposed with Bob Cratchit.

Okay.

So yes,

It's a novella.

And what I like about novellas is no words are wasted.

Every word means something.

And you can't,

There's no glossing over.

There's no there's no room for,

It keeps you highly entertained all the time.

Okay.

So there's no real room for movement.

You've got the staves.

And in each stave,

You've got a particular scene for a particular character that's giving us a particular message.

It's conducted as we conduct an orchestra.

It's written as a musical piece.

Okay.

So that double meaning of carol,

Christmas carol.

Yeah.

It's like a song.

And that's how he planned it.

And it's simple.

If we look at the structure of it,

It's simple yet effective.

And that's the beauty of it.

And he needed to keep it lighthearted.

And even the dark was not that dark.

Okay.

And the social observations were quite comical at times.

The characterizations larger than life.

And every character has something either ridiculous or pure about them.

So yeah,

The readers,

They're going to have an emotional connection with the characters,

The events,

And with each other.

Okay.

They make that connection.

When you see somebody and you are invested in the same story,

The same series,

The same literature,

You have something in common.

And his stories brought people together.

And they still bring people together today.

Okay.

So the readers would actually get involved as well.

They would send letters into the newspaper.

They would communicate with the author.

And they would ask for clues,

Offer suggestions,

Maybe criticisms of the characters.

So there was some kind of involvement there,

Which I think is quite nice.

And I'd like moving forward with my work.

I've got my big novel coming out in serialization and insight time in January.

I would really like to be able to communicate with you via the groups as to the story.

What do you think is going to happen?

You know,

The characters,

Who means what?

It is actually semi-autobiographical,

But it's an eco story.

So it's a comment actually on society today and the chemicalization of the world we live in.

But let's,

I digress,

Let's go back.

So that communication and that opportunity for readers to have a say,

I think is really quite nice.

And that's the power of serialization.

Okay.

So Dickens,

The most famous writer of the Victorian age.

And the term Dickensian is almost synonymous with the term Victorian.

He was alive through many of the Victorian years.

He was born in 1812 and he died in 1870.

So his lifespan,

The majority of the Victorian age.

And he was also alive at the time of the Industrial Revolution.

And we know the Industrial Revolution was responsible.

It was a pivotal moment.

Everything changed.

Okay.

So for us now,

Technology has changed fundamentally the way we communicate and exist as a society.

And the Industrial Revolution did that then.

So the introduction of machinery,

Of steam power,

The idea that people who originally worked in the villages,

Okay,

Now needed to move to the towns to get work.

So there was greater access to money,

But there was also that abuse of power and that use of child labor and complete authority still of the rich over the poor.

So they would become almost autonomous.

They would have to work very,

Very long hours in order to make a living.

And they lacked that sort of,

You know,

That say,

That vote on what they did with their lives.

Life was all about from a very early age,

Working in order to be able to sustain your family who now lived in the town.

So the quality there wasn't good.

Okay.

As we see with Oliver Twist,

You know,

Many,

Many children living in poverty and families living in poverty.

And then,

Of course,

You had the debtor's prison,

The workhouse.

And Dickens' father was sent to debtor's prison.

So he had a working,

First-hand knowledge of what it was like to be a child and labor hard.

He worked in a blacking,

Boot blacking factory.

And he understood first-hand what it was like to be.

Okay.

An Oliver Twist type character out there on his own,

Trying to survive.

And that's why many of his books,

Great Expectations,

For example,

You know,

They feature this desperate child.

And if we look at Scrooge when he was a young boy,

He was,

You know,

He was let down by the system.

And he was on his own,

Right?

He didn't have anyone around to love him.

He was on his own.

And that bitterness,

That resentment,

He carried through.

And that's why he made the decisions he made.

So these are references to Dickens' own experiences and experiences of society around him.

Okay.

It's allegorical,

But,

You know,

It's done in a palatable way.

And what he does is he takes,

He writes these huge characters.

And then what he does is he makes them larger than life and somewhat ridiculous.

Okay.

So he's poking fun at them,

But in a comical way,

And he does it cleverly,

So that it's not a direct insult on his readership,

Because obviously the people reading,

The people wealthy enough to buy the newspapers have that leisure time to sit and read them.

These people are the people he's actually targeting for his message.

But he's making these characters out to be comical and Scrooge to be such an extreme that they don't relate to that.

They can distance themselves from that,

Even though this is a societal comment.

Guys,

You know,

Listen up,

This is what's happening.

But he's made the characters almost,

They're almost like cartoon.

As we view cartoons today,

Where we can distance ourselves from them,

And no matter what message they're telling us,

It's not quite us though,

Is it?

He's not really having a poke at us.

But actually,

Yes,

That's exactly what he was doing.

Okay,

So the Industrial Revolution,

It provided increased wealth,

But dangerous and difficult conditions in factories and the coal mines.

And the stress of long hours and long days meant that deprivation was rife.

Okay,

So,

Yeah,

Then we've got the dark side,

The supernatural coming through.

Now,

The Victorians were obsessed with the supernatural.

They were obsessed with the idea of storytelling,

Something they couldn't quite reach,

Something mystical,

This mysticism,

This everything that wasn't Christian,

Was somehow exciting to them.

Okay,

It was the taboo,

The unknown.

And of course,

He presents these three supernatural characters,

These ghosts,

Who are imparting wisdom,

Right?

And that fascinated his readership.

Because as simplistic as it was,

This is the past,

This is the present,

This is the future,

It fed into their ideas of something mystical,

Something fascinating,

And something they could almost,

A story they could tell their children,

Yeah?

Something almost childlike and innocent,

In such a serious message.

Okay.

So,

He's got them on board,

He's delivered his message,

And he's done it carefully.

Okay,

But of course,

He had secrets himself.

So,

He set up this Scrooge as a man with secrets,

And Dickens has the secrets of his past.

Okay,

And there's a certain kind of beauty in that,

It's like,

There's a man hiding,

He's not a very nice man,

But he's hiding the truth.

And we can look at him and mock him,

Because what a ridiculous thing to do.

And yet,

Secretly,

We're all doing that.

But it's so much easier to look at someone else,

Because that defers the attention away from yourself.

Okay.

And this is exactly what he was doing.

So,

He depicted the stains,

The scars left on the vulnerable,

Who found themselves in this situation he found himself in as a child.

And this gothic dramatization reflected the dichotomy between the rich and the poor.

So,

Dickens is known for this vivid imagination.

He's almost painting pictures as he's writing.

Okay.

And this ability to create these larger-than-life characters.

For example,

Fezziwig.

Now,

Fezziwig's not a main character,

And yet he's pivotal to the message,

All right,

To the moral message.

And this is,

But he's like this man,

Even though he has a bit part.

So,

Even the smaller characters have something very big to say.

He wastes no words,

He wastes no characters.

Tiny Tim is a smaller character,

We could say.

And yet,

What does he represent?

The neglect,

The nation's failure to provide a welfare system to look after its most vulnerable.

And the welfare system wasn't until 1906.

So,

This was in the 1800s,

So it didn't exist.

So,

You've got this situation where if you got sick,

You got sick and you died.

Whatever it was you were sick of.

And the idea that,

You know,

Basically it was seen as a burden.

It was suggested that if you were a rich relative and you had a poor relative,

That it was somehow,

Societally speaking,

A burden,

A stain on your status and something you didn't want.

So,

Everyone kept this at arm's length.

They kept illness at arm's length,

Vulnerability at arm's length.

And very often with Dickens,

Vulnerability is depicted in children's suffering,

Which in something like Oliver Twist,

Which I'm reading at the moment,

Is difficult.

In the first few chapters,

It's very difficult to read because it's a poignant account of true suffering.

And many times,

You know,

Without any parental support,

Without any adult love or nurture whatsoever.

Okay,

So if we look at his novel Bleak House,

For example,

He begins,

And this is where he gets clever.

Charles Dickens,

This is where he gets clever,

Making his message known.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

Okay,

That's from Bleak House.

And he writes it in the narrator's voice.

So,

It's almost as though they're his words and he's thinking that.

But of course,

He's not thinking that.

Okay.

It is a melancholy truth.

So,

From his voice,

He's saying,

I believe that,

You know,

It's a real burden for us to have poor relations.

And isn't it awful?

And yet,

What he's actually doing is mocking that arrogant,

That,

You know,

Self-assured voice,

Okay,

Of the upper classes.

And he's saying,

How dare we speak like this?

How dare we?

How ridiculous that we would think this.

But he doesn't say it in so many words.

He becomes that voice.

And it's up to us as the readers to then say,

What did he mean by that?

Is he,

You know,

Is he making fun?

Okay,

It's subtly done,

And it's cleverly done.

So,

He draws the reader in by making such an arrogant,

Self-entitled statement that we are forced to laugh at with him,

Forced to see the error of our ways.

Okay,

How clever is that?

So,

It's the narrator's voice.

And yet,

It's so far removed from what Dickens actually believes.

And that's ironic.

That's his skill.

Okay.

And of course,

He's making ridiculous of assumptions sound like written gospel,

Which,

Of course,

Only ignorant people do.

Yeah.

So,

He's flexing his intellectual muscle there.

And only those that can read between the lines can say,

Ah,

He's mocking that.

Maybe we should improve our ways.

He's right.

Very,

Very subtle.

So,

Just to go on to my notes here,

This Christmas Carol,

As with other Dickens works,

It's a story of extremes.

Okay.

Which,

Of course,

Is necessary in a good novel,

Right?

The bad needs to be bad,

The good needs to be good.

The dark's got to be very dark.

The light's got to be very light.

His works are a spectacle.

Yeah.

And they feed into this Victorian passion for high drama.

Their art,

Architecture,

Design was a culmination of everything bright,

Gaudy,

Over-embellished,

Ornamental.

And a Christmas Carol reflects that,

Especially with a Ghost of Christmas Present,

Right?

That depicts everything you have,

And yet everything that you have to lose.

Okay.

It's a celebration of the fantastic.

And this work reflects that in its big,

Dramatic way.

The contrasts are immense,

And the characterizations,

As I've said,

Are huge.

Feast or famine,

Life or death,

Good or bad.

There's little room for discussion here,

But there is,

It could be argued,

A sense of relief in that.

With allegorical fiction,

We can see clearly the definition of the boundaries.

We can armor-plate the truth and unquestionably identify the failings of society,

So that we,

The reader,

May learn from that and say,

Well,

That's not me.

I'm not doing that.

But that is something we discuss as a civilized society,

Because that's what we are,

Because we read and we embrace the arts,

And we should be discussing this.

So he did well to start,

And this is where those discussions start in the arts.

And I just wanted to talk a bit about this symbiotic relationship between the author and the reader.

So I think that's really quite important there.

So symbiosis is where two things,

Biological speaking,

They will be organisms living side by side,

Not necessarily the same species.

In literary terms,

They are two things doing,

You know,

In the same space.

Okay,

So we've got the author and the reader.

It's sharing this same experience.

So it's a symbiotic relationship.

Okay.

But is it mutualistic?

So is Dickens gaining as much as the reader?

Is the reader gaining as much as Dickens?

Is it commensalistic?

So that means is one or other of the party gaining more,

But not to the detriment of the other?

So maybe the reader's gaining more because Dickens is doing this as employment,

Right?

So the reader's gaining more,

But it's not to his detriment,

Because he quite likes it anyway.

It's a job he likes.

Or is it parasitic?

Is in fact,

This is controversial,

But it's an idea.

Is in fact,

Dickens,

The parasite?

This is a relationship he's set up.

He's gained his readership,

He's entertained them,

He's shown them the spectacle.

Right?

He's got them on board.

But actually,

He is gaining the power of voice.

He's pushing this narrative.

He's demanding they are held accountable.

They listen.

Okay.

And they challenge the narrative and they say,

Guess what?

Yeah.

Without even realizing they're doing it.

We should be kinder.

We should be more socially aware.

And he is the one gaining.

Because the popular narrative is one person does the work,

The other person takes the rewards.

The other person is there.

They're there to entertain us.

So I as an author,

I'm there to entertain you.

I gain nothing from that.

Or maybe I gain and you gain.

Or maybe you gain and I'm just happy doing my job.

Or maybe I have an agenda and you don't realize I'm feeding you that agenda.

And you're blindly going along with it.

It's an idea.

And we also know that symbiosis can,

Um,

It can lead to morphological variations,

Which means that working alongside each other,

Reading,

Discussing literature,

Okay,

Writing,

Enjoying,

It can lead to some kind of morphing of ideas,

Which is another reason for me wanting to promote the idea of group discussion.

Morphing of ideas and both gaining and both adapting our opinions.

Okay.

Whichever way you look at it,

The arts are essential.

Okay.

Because we're discussing something that is beyond the acceptable sometimes.

We are speaking of things that need to be spoken of in a free and safe space as we're doing now.

And I think it's important to question those things,

Not just,

This is a book,

I'm going to read it.

Yeah.

But understand this,

This need for artists to spread their message and understand,

Right,

What am I willing,

Which messages am I willing to expose myself to?

Because all of this goes in,

It's like with the 21st century,

We've got the popular dystopia,

Where we've got a world that is written without rules.

And that narrative is actually the author saying,

Look,

If you don't buck your ideas up society,

We're going to end up like that.

Okay.

It's not just storytelling.

Okay.

And in some ways,

It's almost romanticizing the craziness and the upset and the,

You know,

And the change in society.

But there's nothing really romantic about it.

There's nothing romantic about having the poor in deprivation and the rich,

Yeah,

Enjoying the life that the ghost of Christmas present showed us.

There's nothing romantic in that.

And it's important to open our eyes to the messages that that literature gives us.

Okay,

So whichever way we view it,

We have to know that Christmas carol is not about giving presents.

It's not about who's got the presents,

Who hasn't.

It's about giving that love,

Giving that time.

As Scrooge learns to give his time to his nephew,

His only living relative.

And at the end,

He says,

I will honor Christmas the whole year long.

And he tries to keep it in his heart the whole year.

So he's remembering the importance of what matters.

Okay.

And that is the message we've got to take from that.

You know,

He had bitterness in his heart.

He grew up without love or support from anyone.

And he believed the only thing that wouldn't let him down was money,

Which is very much a narrative of today,

Which obviously is worth rejecting.

It's ridiculous.

But that bitterness,

You know,

That drive for retribution.

I'd like to sum up today in my little poem.

So we know we're coming to the end when she brings out a poem.

And this poem is called Retribution.

Drink your enemy's tears in a silver chalice.

Look upon their face with venom and malice for win the battle you did,

My friend.

But winning's not the answer.

And it's never the end.

Thank you for listening.

So pleased to see you all.

And it's so great to be here.

I'm going to do another live next week.

I hope all being well.

That's going to be my vocals.

I'm going to be singing.

So we'll have a little jamboree,

Hopefully.

If you can make it,

I'd love to see you.

Thank you so much for coming.

And if you want to catch up with Christmas Carol,

You can find my playlist on my page.

And I'll see you next time.

Bye.